There’s a video of Alex Anzalone that surfaces every year about this time. He doesn’t like it. It is not a crashing tackle or a leaping interception. It’s Anzalone, then a New Orleans Saint, smashing his helmet to the ground in frustration at the end of the 2019 NFC championship.
“I remember everyone was going nuts,” he says.
Not in a good way. The Saints, loaded with talent and playing at home, had seemingly iced a trip to the Super Bowl when a Drew Brees pass went incomplete to Tommylee Lewis with less than two minutes left in the game.
The pass was incomplete because Lewis was body slammed by the L.A. Rams’ cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman.
It was clear pass interference. Just shy of a mugging. Everyone knew it. The penalty would let the Saints run the clock to nothing, then kick an easy game-winning field goal.
Except the flag never came. Despite coaches, players, fans — even announcers – screaming the obvious, the refs stood firm. No call. The Saints “lost our momentum after that,” Anzalone admits, and dropped the game in overtime.
“Coming into that game, we just knew we were going to the Super Bowl,” Anzalone recalls now. “We believed it. After we lost, it was just so heartbreaking.”
“So what did you learn from that?” I ask.
He thinks for a moment.
“That you have to treat every play,” he says, “like it has a life of its own.”
Isn’t that so true? A life of its own? For every play today? For every game the Detroit Lions have played this season? For every crazy stitch in the tapestry that has brought us, after decades of futility, to this Sunday, a day of potential destiny for our Detroit football franchise, only its second chance at a conference title in more than 60 years.
Every play a life of its own.
Because any play can turn your life.
Two sides to every play
On that same Sunday in New Orleans five years ago, Jared Goff watched the no-call collision with an entirely different perspective. He was thrilled. It meant he’d have a chance to win the game.
Goff, then the quarterback for the Rams, directed a nine-play drive in which he threw on every down, moved his team 45 yards in 86 seconds, and saw his teammate Greg Zuerlein kick a game-tying field goal.
Minutes later, in overtime, Goff led the winning drive. Another long field goal, and he and the Rams were off to the Super Bowl.
“It’s starting to set in now,” a smiling Goff told ESPN that day, standing outside the Rams locker room. “It’s a dream come true. We’re going to the Super Bowl. Get a chance to compete for a world title. It’s unbelievable, man. It’s a great feeling.”
At that moment, Goff no doubt felt the way Anzalone had, that the moment had a life of its own, and his team was destined to seize it and win it all.
But we all know what happened. Goff and the Rams were stuffed in the Super Bowl by Tom Brady and the Patriots, 13-3. It began a slide in the mind of Rams’ coach Sean McVay that ultimately led him to lose belief in Goff and trade him away to the Lions.
Now, here Goff is again, knocking on the Super Bowl’s door.
“Yeah, a lot of similarities,” the quarterback said when asked to compare his last NFC championship game to today’s tilt against the San Francisco 49ers. “On the road, certainly will be the similarity … against a good team. It’ll be a tough matchup regardless of how the game goes. It’ll be a four-quarter game.”
Or longer, if his last one is any predictor.
We’re all in this together
An overtime game would be fine for guys like Lions left tackle Taylor Decker. After all, unlike Anzalone or Goff, Decker has never come close to a game like this. He waited seven years between his first playoff game, as a rookie, and the wild card game two weeks ago. In between, he has played for four different head coaches, and endured some miserable losing seasons.
“There were definitely days where it was tough going to work,” he admitted last week. “When you’re going out there and you’re a loser, because that’s what your record says you are, that can be tough, because we all take a ton of pride. …. And when you’re labeled a loser, that sucks.
“But I’ve always felt that quitting is just way too accepted. … It’s just made this experience so much sweeter for me. Because there was a time in my career where I didn’t know if I was gonna get to play in another playoff game.”
He gets one today, after eight years in Honolulu Blue, and Graham Glasgow gets one after eight years, too (with a bunch of losing in Denver mixed in), and Frank Ragnow gets one after six years, and Dan Campbell, the coach, gets one after having endured the ignoble winless season of 2008 as a Lions player.
All of them, the kids on this team who in years past would still be in college, the veterans, the backups, the special teamers, they all get one today. A chance at that life-changing moment.
And then there’s those of us on the other side, the watchers, the cheerers, the jumpers, the screamers, the ones who are draining the bank account on a trip to San Francisco, the ones who will gather with expected snow and rain falling outside to watch on a big screen somewhere in Michigan.
“Dan used this word the other day, that the players have a ‘kinship’ with the city,” Decker said. “Fans talk about it as ‘we’ and ‘us,’ so it’s kind of felt like that. We’re all in this together — especially having some dark times prior to this year.
“As a player, that’s what you work towards. You want to build a legacy of being a winner.
“And we have that beautiful opportunity.”
‘You’re so close … you can almost touch it’
It is an opportunity. And it is beautiful. But as Anzalone and Goff can tell you, it’s a slippery thing, that football, and the smallest thing can send you in another direction. Which perhaps is why, when I ask Anzalone what’s the one thing he took from his last NFC championship that he would warn his first-time teammates about today, he only half-jokingly says: “Don’t leave it up to the refs.”
“You’re just, you’re so close to the Super Bowl that you can feel it, you can almost touch it,” Anzalone insists. “And you just know that if you lose this one, you don’t know how, when, or if you’ll ever get back to this point.”
In order to avoid that, the Lions will have to be virtually mistake-free today against the 49ers. A turnover, especially an early one, could send the game spiraling. It happened last time the Lions played this game, in 1992 in Washington, when Erik Kramer, deep in his own territory, was sacked on the first Detroit series, fumbled the ball away, leading to a touchdown moments later.
Detroit never recovered.
The Lions must also be aware of San Francisco’s deflating ability to make a big play at almost any time. It might be a Deebo Samuel explosion, or a Brandon Aiyuk grab, or a burst by Christian McCaffrey, all of whom are Pro Bowlers, each of whom can kill you.
Anzalone will be a big factor in catching their bullets, particularly when McCaffrey comes speeding through the line. The son of a physician who has two brothers as doctors, Anzalone, 29, with his Thor-like blonde locks and his play-through-cracked-ribs toughness, fits the prescription for the new Lions. He came here on a one-year contract, wasn’t sure whether he wanted to stay, but eventually saw where the team was going, bought into Campbell’s “bite their kneecap” approach, signed a long-term deal last year, and now feels that “kinship” with the city that Decker spoke about.
“Detroit is a place that’s just been waiting for a winner,” he says. “And you can leave a legacy here and have your name in history.
“If you go to San Francisco, it’s not like that.”
No, it isn’t. They have lots of Super Bowl trophies out there. And today will be their 19th appearance in an NFC championship game.
Their 19th?
“Doesn’t matter. We know we’re on a special team,’’ Anzalone says. “You look at the things we ‘ve done so far, breaking the history of the Lions. …
“And it’s not over.”
At 6:30 tonight, we’ll find out if that’s true. Anzalone knows the video of him slamming his helmet in disgust will be playing on various screens across America this weekend. But he’s not thinking about an ending like that anymore, or how he was so brokenhearted that “I couldn’t even watch the Super Bowl that year.”
Of course, he doesn’t plan on watching it this year either.
He plans on playing in it.
Good Lord, Lions fans. Can you even imagine?
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.
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